


Punish

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2017 [33]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Corporal Punishment, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sexual Content, Spanking, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 01:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12665385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: “I deserve this.” Established Haytham/Shay.





	Punish

“Hit me.”  
  
Haytham slides his hand down Shay’s spine, fingers dipping into the spaces between the vertebrae and rising up onto the bone, up, down, up, down, up, down, until his fingers slide off Shay’s tailbone. Shay shudders deeply, like he’s been doused with freezing water.  
  
“Why?” Haytham asks lightly, as though asking why Shay prefers the color red or enjoys chicken over pork. He is curious and disturbed by the request in equal measures, but does not want to tip Shay off to it. Haytham is no blushing flower, he knows the sort of things that go on behind closed bedroom doors, knows that some people prefer strange things to help rile them.  
  
But riling does not seem to be what Shay is after. And the fact that he’s three sheets to the wind doesn’t incline Haytham to believe this request comes from a place of logic or sexual interest; he smells far too much like whiskey and sounds far too miserable for it to be any of that.  
  
“Because I deserve it,” Shay slurs into the bedding, Haytham straining to hear him properly. “I deserve this.”  
  
Haytham runs a hand over the curve of his ass, and he shudders again. Maybe it’s the cold that’s make him shake so violently- it’s November now, and there’s been a persistent chill in the air lately, and Shay has just recently come in from outside, eyes unfocused and gait unsteady.  
  
“Why do you deserve it?”  
  
“Ask the people of Lisbon,” Shay says. Except he doesn’t say it so much as he- it’s not even slurring, it’s too incoherent to be slurring, and Haytham had to parse the sounds out in his mind to make them into something he could understand.  
  
And he does understand, now. Of course he knows about Lisbon, and Shay’s connection to it. Really, he only wonders why he didn’t remember that the anniversary of the earthquake was coming sooner, because Shay’s been acting strangely all month: He’s been snapping at Gist, at Haytham, at anyone who looks at him funny, and Haytham’s been too bloody confused by the behavior (and, in spite of himself, somewhat impressed that Shay had had the gall to tell him, the Templar Grandmaster, to ‘go off and fuck yourself’) to be offended by it.  
  
But now everything is clear.  
  
Haytham is not under the delusion that what he and Shay share is in any way, shape or form normal because _they_ are not normal- like calls to like, after all. But opposites also attract, and where Haytham has become exceptionally good at burying his feelings, Shay has not; he flagellates himself internally for the mistakes he’s made, and now he wants Haytham to assist him in said flagellation.  
  
“Will it make you feel better if I do?” Haytham asks.  
  
“Yes,” Shay says without hesitation.  
  
It’s Haytham that hesitates, because the sort of feelings Shay has brewing in his heart and head are not the sort that can be beaten out with a few strikes of a belt, and he knows it. They _both_ know it, but Shay’s mind is clouded by alcohol and misery.  
  
But if it relieves him in the moment, then Haytham is willing to grant him this request, however strange it is and however uneasy it makes him feel to grant it.  
  
“How?”  
  
“Your belt’s fine. Don’t care, just make it hurt,” Shay says, _pleads_. “I killed all those people, I deserve it, Haytham, I deserve it.”  
  
“You don’t,” Haytham says conversationally as he undoes his belt and carefully arranges it so that the buckle won’t make contact with Shay’s skin. “But if this is what you need to feel better, I can give it to you.”  
  
Were this been a normal night in their bedroom, were Shay looking at him with dark, lust-filled eyes and asking for a spanking, Haytham might have said something to the effect of ‘For the love of God, don’t move, and kindly tell me if I’m going too hard; you have things to do tomorrow and I bloody-well won’t have you walking funny. Gist already suspects far too much.’ Haytham would cloak his request that Shay let him know if he needed a reprieve with sarcasm, unable by his own nature to allow raw concern into the open air.  
  
But if he asks Shay to be honest tonight, to warn him if he’s striking too hard, or if he’s had enough, Shay will lie and say yes and he won’t say a word when it actually happens. Haytham will have to be the one to look out for Shay’s best interests now, because Shay isn’t in a position to do so on his own.  
  
Haytham pulls Shay’s already askew trousers down further so they rest around his thighs, and then lays down a few strikes across Shay’s ass. Shay jerks forward with each hit, fingers clutching at the sheets and his breathing ragged. His moans are weak, broken things, and they lack the usual sensuality of what Haytham expects to hear in their bedroom.  
  
“Too much?” He asks.  
  
“No,” Shay says.  
  
Haytham lays down a few more strikes, increasing the power behind them ever so slightly, and he sees that Shay is half-hard, more likely from the fact that every strike causes him to grind against the bed than that he finds the strikes arousing. Shay whimpers and makes distressed sounds, half-swallowed by the blankets when he shoves his face into them.  
  
Now Haytham is the one nearing his breaking point. This is not helping; it’s making things worse. Shay is not calming down, he’s becoming more anxious with each hit, working himself into a self-loathing frenzy that’s threatening to spiral into full-out hyperventilation.  
  
“Shay,” Haytham says, throwing the belt to the floor and setting a hand on Shay’s flank, “Shay, I’m done. That’s enough for one night. You don’t deserve this.”  
  
And then Shay startles- perhaps even outright frightens him- by letting out an agonized shrieking sound before breaking down into ugly, heaving sobs.  
  
Haytham watches, bewildered and yes, alright, _terrified_ , as Shay weeps hysterically into the blanket, babbling words that Haytham doesn’t fully understand, but catches pieces that, when put together, sound like ‘I’m mad, I’m mad, I’m going mad’ and ‘I killed those people, I killed them all’.  
  
If you had asked Haytham, say, five years ago, if he could ever see himself sleeping with a man who would one day get hopelessly drunk and start weeping hysterically, he’d have thought you insane. As before, like attracts like, and Haytham, in that time, could not have conceived ever being accepting of a romantic partner that would be so unrestrained with their behavior, their emotions.  
  
It is a testament to Shay’s uniqueness, his success at worming his way into Haytham’s actual, genuine affection, that Haytham does not begrudge him this moment of weakness, is not disgusted by his inability to keep a stiff upper-lip.  
  
“Shay,” Haytham sighs, slides his hands up and down Shay’s back. “Shay, calm down, it’s alright. It’s _alright._ ”  
  
But Shay does not calm down. He weeps and screams and cries for the better part of the next hour, and Haytham does his best to soothe him: He snuffs the lights and crawls into bed with Shay, ignoring the stink of stale alcohol clinging to him and the fact that Shay is so much louder when pressed right up beside him.  
  
Eventually, though, Shay does exhaust himself. Drunk as he is, it’s a wonder he’s stayed awake this long, howled himself as hoarse as he has. His screams and sobs are soon reduced to pitiful whimpers and snuffling; and then, after more time passes, they die away completely, because Shay has finally succumbed to the alcohol and passed out, his head pressed awkwardly against the side of Haytham’s chest.  
  
Haytham succumbs to a different kind of exhaustion, one borne of a long night and the sort of anxiety one only experiences when a loved one is in some sort of catastrophic distress. He falls asleep dreading the awkward and necessary conversation he will be forced to have tomorrow.  
  
In the morning, Shay looks at Haytham with bleary, shame-filled eyes and can’t quite meet his gaze. He tries to alleviate the headache he undoubtedly has with some hair of dog, but Haytham rips the glass from his hand without a word, pours it out, and refills the glass with water.  
  
“You’re cut off,” Haytham snaps, but it’s an empty threat because he doesn’t control Shay’s money. He does, however, have a claim staked on Shay’s loyalty, on his heart and mind, and he’s hedging his bets on Shay being just embarrassed enough about the previous night, just horrified at how badly he’d lost control, to acquiesce to Haytham’s demands today.  
  
“Alright,” Shay whispers without a fight, hands wrapped around his head, fingers laced at the back of his skull like he fears his head will come apart if he doesn’t physically hold it together.  
  
Haytham is satisfied that there is no fight, no resistance, but he’s seen beneath the layers into a piece of Shay that he’s never seen before, and it has deeply disturbed him.  
  
“Stay home today,” Haytham orders. “Rest up. I don’t want you falling on your face in the middle of official business.” Pause. “You look like hell.”  
  
“I feel like hell.” Shay meets his eyes, finally, and now they’re not full of shame- they’re blank. Hollow.  
  
God damn it.  
  
Lisbon was an _accident._  
  
Shay had no way of knowing what would happen.  
  
And as Shay is not a hardened maniac, intent on slaughtering innocents by the dozen (Haytham would know, he’s met numerous such men in his lifetime), if he had known that tampering with the Precursor site would trigger such devastation, he would not have done it.  
  
“Go back to bed,” Haytham says, unable to resist reaching over and carding his fingers through Shay’s hair. “Get some sleep. I can do whatever needs to be done today.”  
  
Shay looks so miserable, and Haytham feels a section of his otherwise diligently frozen heart thaw dangerously when Shay takes his hand and kisses it. “I’m sorry,” He says. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be,” Haytham says, because he doesn’t need an apology, he needs assurance that this is a rare occurrence, that the deadened look to Shay’s eyes will not become a permanent fixture. In Haytham’s experience, men with that look never last very long: They walk into danger without caring for the consequences, or hang themselves from a rafter of a barn. “Just get some rest.” He hesitates, considering. “And rest _easily_ , Shay. Lisbon was not your fault.”  
  
“Aye,” Shay says, without an ounce of sincerity.  
  
“You don’t deserve to suffer for this.”  
  
Shay doesn’t respond.  
  
“You _don’t_ , Shay.”  
  
Shay looks so tired. “I want to sleep,” He says, without responding to Haytham’s insistences. He gets up from the kitchen table and hobbles off towards the bedroom, and Haytham shakes his head, runs a hand over his face.  
  
This, he thinks, is a battle he will not win.  
  
But then, he’s nothing if not stubborn.  
  
-End


End file.
